Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Knowledge , or wisdom rather, is a means of reaching the divine, according to the Gita. It is called Jnana Yoga. The previous two posts of this blog discussed Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga. The wisdom that the Gita advocates is of the spiritual kind. It is essentially the realisation of the oneness of all reality and hence the divinity of all reality. You are divine. So is the guy next to you. So too are the flowers in your garden, the bees that come to the flowers, the water that sustains your plants, the insects, the stones... What greater religion can there be than the one which bathes you in an ocean of divinity, the same ocean in which all other creatures and everything else stand bathed? Most humans don't reach such a stage of spirituality, however. We are driven by three gunas (attributes), Krishna tells Arjuna. These gunas control our actions. Tamas or delusion is a predominant guna. It is a kind of delusion. It's a kind of darkness that veils the reality preventing you f...

The ultimate purpose of the Bhagavad Gita is to teach egolessness to humans. There are three ways of achieving the state of egolessness, according to the Gita. The first is Karma Yoga, which was discussed in the previous post . Today we are going to look at the second way, Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of devotion. Chapter 12 of the Gita discusses bhakti in particular though chapters 7 to 12 are more or less about bhakti and I’m going to look at that section today. Bhakti or devotion is another name for love. Bhakti yoga is the process of discovering the divine through love. The love is so intense that the devotee surrenders himself totally to the divine. As a result, the devotee begins to see the divine in everything, in every creature. All that exists is now holy for the devotee. No real devotee can distinguish between people on the basis of caste, creed, language, etc. There is no place for such divisions since everything, everyone, is an extension of the divine. The Gita speaks abo...

I bought a copy of annotated Bhagavad Gita a few months back with the intention of understanding the scripture better since I’m living in a country that has become a Hindu theocracy in all but the Constitution. After reading the first part [chapters 1 to 6] which is about Karma, I gave up. Shelving a book [literally and metaphorically] is not entirely strange to me. If a book fails to appeal to me after a reasonable number of pages, I abandon it. The Gita failed to make sense to me just like any other scripture. That’s not surprising since I’m not a religious kind of a person. I go by reason. I accept poetry which is not quite rational. Art is meaningful for me though I can’t detect any logic in it. Even mysticism is acceptable. But the kind of stuff that Krishna was telling Arjuna didn’t make any sense at all. To me. Just a sample. When Arjuna says he doesn’t want to fight the war because he can’t kill his own kith and kin, Krishna’s answer is: Fight. If you are killed, you win he...

Bringing up children is both an art and a science. The parents must have certain skills as well as qualities and value systems if the children are to grow up into good human beings. How do the Bollywood stars bring up their children? That is an interesting subject which probably no one studied seriously until Rashmi Uchil did. The result of her study is the book titled Raising Stars: The challenges and joys of being a Bollywood parent . The book brings us the examples of no less than 26 Bollywood personalities on how they brought up their children in spite of their hectic schedules and other demands of the profession. In each chapter, the author highlights one particular virtue or skill or quality from each of these stars to teach us about the importance of that aspect in bringing up children. Managing anger, for example, is the topic of the first chapter where Mahima Chowdhary is our example. We move on to gender equality, confidence, discipline, etc, and end with spirituality whi...

Are we Indians now living in an aberrant period of history? A period that is far worse than the puranic Kali Yuga? A period in which gods decide to run away in fear of men? That’s a very provocative question, isn’t it, especially in a time when people are being arrested for raising much more innocuous questions than that? But I raise my hands in surrender because I’m not raising this question; the Malayalam movie that Maggie and I watched is. Before I go to the provocations of the movie, I am compelled to clarify a spelling problem with the title of the movie. The title is Bhramayugam [ ഭ്രമയുഗം] in Malayalam. But the movie’s records and ads write it as Bramayugam [ ബ്രമയുഗം ] which would mean the yuga of Brama. Since Brama doesn’t mean anything in Malayalam, people like me will be tempted to understand it as the yuga of Brahma . In fact, that is how I understood it until Maggie corrected me before we set off to watch the movie by drawing my attention to the Malayalam spelling ...

Read Part 1 of thi s here . K abir lived in the 15 th century. But his poems and songs are still valued. Being illiterate, he didn’t write them. They were passed on orally until they were collected by certain enthusiasts into books. Vipul Rikhi’s book, Drunk on Love: The Life, Vision and Songs of Kabir , not only brings the songs and poems together in one volume but also seeks to impart the very spirit of Kabir to the reader. Kabir is not just a name, the book informs us somewhere in the beginning. Kabir is a tradition. He is a legend, a philosophy, poetry and music. I would add that Kabir was a mystic. Most of his songs have something to do with spirituality. They strive to convey the deep meaning of reality. They also question the ordinary person’s practice of religion. They criticise the religious leaders such as pandits and mullahs. Though a Muslim, Kabir was immensely taken up by Ram, the Hindu god, for reasons known only to him perhaps. Most of the songs are about the gr...

Kabirvad Kabirvad is a banyan tree in Gujarat. It is named after Kabir, the mystic poet and saint of the 15 th century. There is a legend behind the tree. Two brothers are in search of a guru. They have an intuitive feeling that the guru will appear when they are ready for it. They plant a dry banyan root at a central spot in their courtyard. Whenever a sadhu passes by, they wash his feet at this particular spot. Their conviction is that the root will sprout into a sapling when their guru appears. Years pass and there’s no sign of any sapling. No less than four decades later, the sapling rises. The man who had come the previous day was a beggarly figure whom the brothers didn’t treat particularly well though they gave him some water to drink out of courtesy. But the sapling rose, after 40 years! So the brothers went in search of that beggarly figure. Kabir, the great 15 th century mystic poet, had been their guest. The legend says that the brothers became Kabir’s disciples. The b...

Image from Deccan Chronicle “ Doms are the keepers of a sacred flame – supposedly burning for centuries – over which they have sole ownership. Lighting each funeral pyre with the Doms’ fire is considered not only auspicious but also crucial. Without it, it is alleged, a devout Hindu will not receive moksha, liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth .” [ Fire on the Ganges ] Doms are an untouchable caste of people living on the banks of the Ganga in Varanasi, a place dear to Lord Shiva. The Hindus believe that if they die in Varanasi, their souls will attain the ultimate deliverance from the cycle of birth and death. If they cannot die there, at least the corpse should be cremated there. Doms are the corpse-burners in Varanasi. Though these Dalits called Doms are untouchable by caste, they are the gate-keepers of heaven. Radhika Iyengar’s book, Fire on the Ganges [HarperCollins, 2023], tells us the story of the Doms, a story of oppression and exploitation. Obliquely, this is...

A few dozen books arrived home the other day through a special arrangement, thanks to a good friend in Delhi. What a way to begin one’s retirement! My job as teacher has another ten days to go. I chose this retirement with due respect to an old saying in Malayalam, my mother tongue: ‘Quit singing when your voice is still good.’ On the verge of completing four decades of teaching, I didn’t want to leave the profession with any sour blood in the heart. The classroom has undergone a sea change. Teaching has been a relationship for me with my students, notwithstanding my inevitable flaws and limitations as a teacher. Relationships have become rather tenuous now, quite as professional as a one-night stand. I decided to devote all my time to reading, blogging, some travels and a bit of gardening. It is then that the friend from Delhi put up a very unexpected suggestion to which I said yes because I was going to get a few dozen books free in the process whose details cannot be divulged no...

People are not as bad as they appear. They are worse, Oscar Wilde would quip. They are better, much better, deep inside provided you care to see, Clare Pooley would chide Wilde. The People on Platform 5 is Clare Pooley’s novel which is more inspiring than most inspirational literature and more motivating than most motivational books. It belongs to a new genre. Feel-good fiction is a new genre, I guess. This book belongs to that class and it deserves an eminent place there. This novel brings some strangers together on a train from Hampton Court to London Waterloo and back. These people are all regular commuters on that train as they go to work in the morning at the same time and return home in the evening, at the same time again, every day. They see each other regularly. But they don’t know each other, they don’t care to know either. That’s how people in cities are. But a medical emergency brings a few of these people close to one another. And there begins the story of this nov...

It was on the bank of the river which borders his farm that James met Yulia. James was collecting nutmegs from his trees when he noticed a woman sitting on the riverbank. Something didn’t look right. This was a village and this foreigner had no reason to be here on the bank of a river by the side of a private farm. Overcoming his initial hesitation, James walked towards her. Hello, he said. She responded with another hello. A lifeless hello. Her face looked pale like that of a corpse. James knew enough English to manage a simple conversation. So he learnt that her name was Yulia and that she was from Ukraine. He had seen bombs falling on Ukraine day after day, month after month, bringing down beautiful apartments, laying waste splendid landscapes, killing people including cute little children who deserved to be fondled. Even the bachelor heart of James wept for those innocent children. Why are we humans like this? He asked himself a thousand times. Why are we so evil? All those p...

India’s ruling party, Narendra Modi’s own party, wants Indians to celebrate Valentine’s Day as Cow Hugging Day . Valentine is a Western concept, they inform us. India has a superior sexual morality. Like what you see in the classical temples of Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, the Sun Temples of Odisha and Gujarat, Virupaksa of Hampi in Karnataka, the Jain temples of Rajasthan, the Sathyamurthy Perumal Temple of Tamil Nadu, and the Lingaraj Temple of Odisha. If I post pictures of the sculptures from those temples, Google may block my post as obscene because Google is Western and India is the West’s Guru now. But let me try anyway to put a representative pic or two here, just to give you an idea of what ancient Indian civilisation was offering to its temple devotees.  Just Google for Indian temple erotica for a lot, lot more India is a country that gave Kamasutra to the world. Kamasutra is not just a sex manual though any average man and some women too will love it as that. It descr...

Book Review Title: The Travelling Cat Chronicles Author: Hiro Arikawa Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2019 Pages: 249 This book will touch the most tender core of your heart. It is a love story with a difference: it is love between a man and his cat. Right from page one to the last page, this novel gives the reader a feeling of tenderness. Reading this novel is like sitting on the side of a beautiful mountain brook and listening to the gurgling of water while feeling the gossamer caress of the cool breeze on your body. I bought this book precisely because I have four pet cats who all have a special place each in my heart. If you love cats, this book will keep you hooked. Even if you don’t have a soft corner for those creatures, you will still love this book for the tenderness it makes you feel. The author, Hiro Arikawa, is a cat-lover, obviously.  Hiro Arikawa with her cat Satoru Miyawaki is a young man who takes care ...